For he could not all in an instant decide which side of this question to take.

He looked at Albert, frail, romantic; an ideal representative of that old nobility of France which was never practical, and elected to go to the guillotine rather than seek to cultivate that modern virtue.
"At the same time, Madame, it is well to remember that a loan offered now may reasonably be expected to bring such a return in the future as will provide dots for the de Chantonnays to the end of time." Madame was about to make a spirited reply; she might even have suggested that the Beauvoir estate would be better apportioned to Albert's wife than to Juliette as the wife of another, but Albert himself stopped in front of them and swept away all argument by a passionate gesture of his small, white hand.
"It is concluded," he said.

"I sell the Beauvoir estate! Have not the Chantonnays proved a hundred times that they are equal to any sacrifice for the sake of France ?".